Merry Christmas Freedonia
Merry Christmas Freedonia is the title of an annual series of Christmas themed animations created by 
ScarClaw72. They most often take place in Winterthorn, and feature the founders, himself, and many other players from the server.
History
Origin
Early into ScarClaw72's days into the server, he was inspired by the cinematic videos on the MinecraftOnline homepage to make a trailer that would blow away them all. This would be achieved using his secret weapon, 3D animation like he had once done for the now-defunct server CraftingMadness. In a similar sense to the predecessor, he would make it as a surprise for the server. After doing research, he came across a world downloader Modifications. He began making copies of different parts of the server, notably spawn, the rules hall, and some areas from the Tour. While compiling the files into .objs however, during a conversation in-game, it was brought to his attention that world downloading was not allowed. After being prompted, he deleted all the local files he had and indefinitely put the project on ice. He was told had he gotten approval from Riot, he could continue the project. While for a bit he tried writing up the best email he could with intent to do just that, he later lost the motivation believing his ambition had gotten the better of him.
About a month later, when Scar was exploring the server in between his newly recent Exploring Freedonia series, he discovered the town of Winterthorn. He experienced a strange experience of aw and an atmosphere he felt nowhere else on the server could really capture. As time went on, he would formulate the idea to try and make a music video in this town. During the fall of 2016 though, he was going through an unbelievably emotional time period in his life, he ended up taking quite a break from the server. He did, however during that time frame, create an almost if not completely accurate replica of winterthorn using screenshots, journeymap data, and the server Map. With time running out near christmas, Scar hastily put together the first Merry Christmas Freedonia simply called Merry X-mas Freedonia.
In 2019, 
Anna_28 gave Scar a proper world download of Winterthorn, removing the need for cropped shots to hide the tight borders, and offering an up-to-date testbed for new sets.
Ambition
While Scar did not build his first desktop until 2018, 2017 gave him a lot of resources unparalleled for making the sequel animation a reality. Taking the second year of digital media during his senior year of Highschool offered him about three hours a day to work on project-related things as long as it fits within class-based material. Thankfully animation was one of those things, giving him better computers and a dedicated time every day where he could work on the animation. The scale and production quality increased dramatically, as well as ambition. One Hearth's Warming Eve would not only tell a story, but start one, thus beginning the tradition of over-arching narratives for the annual series.
Five Years Later
During the five year anniversary, a miniseries was created called Evergreen that depicted events and created hype leading up to Merry Christmas Freedonia 2020. The 2020 animation is planned to act as a sendoff and a piece that brings all the animations so far to a close. It started out by telling the story of ScarClaw72 as he formed a band together for an upcoming concert, and gave the players of MCO an opportunity to be featured in their own mini-episodes singing a Christmas song of their choice. Hindsight made it rather unfortunately that the only two player entries that filed properly became infamous players of the server. Although not quite a failure, Scar considered this run of the miniseries to have unfortunately missed the mark.
A New Arc
At the end of 2020's animation, a new character was teased hinting at the future of the series. This village was named Sam, and was one of the two new lead characters for the next five year story arc. He properly debuted the following year with 2022's Story animation, telling the story of a man searching for his place in the Christmas town and finding it when he comes across a new arrival. Adam hailed from a big faraway city and was looking to start new in Winterthorn. With a musical history, he pulled Sam off his feet and the two formed both a romantic and business relationship as a musical duo. This debut animation, originally intended for 2021, was reluctantly delayed to 2022 when ScarClaw72 became faced with an onslaught of real-life problems that took away any free time to work on the project he may have had. 2020 had previously also been very unkind, partly resulting in the messy Evergreen series, but it became too much to work around. The animations was wrapped up in 2022 and the series continued forward. Although it may have offset the series by a year, it did mean that the 10th animation would now also be the 10th anniversary of the original.
2023's animation returned to a simpler, community-focused project that didn't worry so much about the narrative. This would set the stage for what would become the most ambitious (and painful) development cycles of any the projects.
All Good Things...
Since the debut of Sam's Story in 2020, a few specific songs were already planned ahead as parts of the story. 2024 was one of them, telling the backstory of Adam before his arrival in Winterthorn. ScarClaw72 was very anxious about this entry for multiple reasons going into pre-production. These included the more mature-tone it would include and also the scale of it. Instead of being set in just Winterthorn, this year shared a setting with Phoenix Isles which was a considerably larger location. There would be more going on, more locations, more characters, more background elements, and a whole lot else. This immense work load paired with a delayed start to production and a convention Scar was attending in the middle of it, the crunch that resulted became a wake-up call for the series' sole creative. The tight schedule and massive scale of the project files demanded a whole lot from Scar's upgraded PC, but still it was not enough. With Christmas only a week away and so much left to export, Scar bit the bullet and reached out to other members of the community to help render the scenes and push the project past the finish line on time. Thanks primarily to the help of 
Aidan and 
Txkeykeeper who donated their rigorous PC power, the animation met it's deadline.
Due to a variety of factors, ScarClaw72 was considering a touch choice to make. The hellish production of 2024's animation made him all-to-aware that these annual ~200 hour endeavors were becoming more difficult to continue while both his life as an adult (and declining health) continued to get in the way more and more. While still heavily vested in the server and it's community, Scar has also been prone to periods of inactivity and was feeling his age as a server-member after almost 9 years of playing. While he did not plan to leave the server in the foreseeable future, Scar did make the decision to announce that 2026's 10th animation would be the final installment in the series. With a planned 9th and 10th animation, as well as a few other projects beside them, he hopes to end on a healthy and satisfying end to the series. Some of these other projects include a second iteration of Evergreen in 2026, and a remastering and re-release of many of the old animations for 2025. The narrative will conclude in 2025, and 2026 will be the last big hoorah for players of the server. It's is not completely out of the question that the series may continue past it's planned end point, but Scar wanted to have a healthy stopping point if he felt it was best when such time came.
Series
The Ballad of Jessica (2016-2020)
The Ballad of Jessie tells the story of a boy named James. As a child, he falls in love with a girl named Jessica. Leading up to Christmas, he finds her trapped out in the snow with no way to get home. James manages to convince the bartender across the street to pay for a taxi to take her home. A few years later, Jessica recognizes him sitting out by the waterfront, and invites him into her restaurant for the night. The both socialize and end up falling for each other that Christmas, but end up going their separate ways in the morning. 3 Decades down the line, James works a guitar player, who sings of his stories, including the first time he met Jessica. Once eventually faced with his mortality, Jessica manages to find him after a long search and the two share a moment before he passes away. Visiting his grave every year around Christmas time, she remembers a feeling she once had and has to learn to move on. Finding friends among the founders, she is given a place at the Evergreen concert to perform for the people of Freedonia.
2016 - Merry X-mas Freedonia (Not Quite Silence)
2017 – One Hearth’s Warming Eve
2018 – When Christmas Comes To Town
2019 – Old City Bar
2020 – Evergreen Miniseries
2020 – Cool In The Cold
Sam's Story (2022 - 2026)
Sam's story was first teased at the end of 2020's animation. It begins with 2022's "Story", that tells the story of a villager resident of Winterthorn, Sam, who is in a rough patch of life trying to survive as a street musician. He meets a fellow performer by the name of Adam with whom he kindles a relationship and begins a musical duet. Together, they pull out of his tough stage of life and pursue a happier future. In 2024's "A New York Christmas", we are introduced to the background of this Adam character. He was the lead of a band hailing from Phoenix Isles. After a performance in the bustling night, he is jumped on the way from home by a mugger. Forced to defend himself, he shoots the oncoming robber before taking off in a panicked haze to get home. After being turned away by his wife and child, he is pursued by authorities under presumed murder charges until he flees in a boat out to sea. He is then later seen arriving in Winterthorn, where the events of 2022's animation begin. This storyline will see it's proper resolution in 2025.